Women and the Making of the Modern House: A Social and Architectural History

2025-01-01

Women, Gender, and Architectural History

De Gruyter eBooks · 2024

• History
• Archaeology

Mary McLeod in conversation with Salomon Frausto and Leá-Catherine Szacka

FOOTPRINT · 2022

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Art history

In February 1989, architectural historian and theorist Mary McLeod published her now seminal essay entitled ‘Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era: From Postmodernism to Deconstructivism’ in Assemblage 8. In the essay, she examined the relationship between architecture and politics in the 1980s, a time of unprecedented change. The following conversation discusses the circumstances under which the essay was originally written and offers her reflections thirty years later to think about the relationship between architecture and populism today.

‘To make something with nothing’: Le Corbusier's proposal for refugee housing—Les Constructions ‘Murondins’

The Journal of Architecture · 2018-04-03

This paper discusses the complex political trajectory of Le Corbusier's little-known project for war refugees, Les Constructions ‘Murondins’, and examines how it embodies a significant transformation in both his social orientation and formal ideas during the 1930s and the Vichy period.In 1940, Le Corbusier and his partner Pierre Jeanneret designed the ‘Murondins’ scheme as a means to erect provisional housing and villages rapidly (including a school, club and youth centre). Le Corbusier proposed that these structures would be built by local youths using pisé (‘rammed earth’), tree trunks, branches and other readily available materials. Beyond housing those in need, he hoped that these new settlements would be the foundation of a new grassroots regional culture that would revitalise the French countryside. For the following two years, he actively promoted the ‘Murondins’ project to the Vichy government (unsuccessfully) as a means of mobilising rural youth; after France's liberation, he campaigned for it again as a solution for housing war victims. Nor did he abandon it in subsequent decades: in 1955, he proposed it to Abbé Pierre's Faim et Soif as a solution for sheltering the homeless; and in 1963, he offered it as a means of housing Algerian Muslims fleeing to France after the Algerian war.

Modernism

DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · 2017-09-24 · 1 citations

Although the word “modernism” is commonly used today to refer to twentieth-century modern architecture, its occurrence was rare in the first half of that century. Instead, a variety of terms were used, including Neues Bauen, Nieuwe Bouwen, Architettura Razionale, “Modern Architecture”, and “Modern Movement”, reflecting the values and emphases of its various proponents. This essay gives a brief history of the evolution of the vocabulary employed to describe modern architecture during the 1920s and 1930s, and then proposes several reasons for the shift in vocabulary that began to occur after the rise of postmodern architecture.

Le Corbusier. Furniture and Interiors 1905-1965

Journal of Design History · 2014-04-28 · 1 citations

Arthur Rüegg’s magnificent, expensive, new book Le Corbusier. Furniture and Interiors 1910–1965, done in collaboration with Klaus Spechtenhauser, presents an aspect of Le Corbusier’s career that is little known, especially in the English-speaking world: his lifelong preoccupation with the decorative arts. Architects and design historians have long been familiar with the now-famous three chairs and ‘airplane’ table, which he created with Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand in 1928–1929; but few individuals—aside from those fortunate enough to have read Rüegg’s earlier essays or to have seen the 2002 exhibition ‘Le Corbusier before Le Corbusier’ (curated by Stanislaus von Moos and Rüegg)—are familiar with the range of Le Corbusier’s furniture and interior designs, especially his early work in his hometown La Chaux Chaux-de de-Fonds, Switzerland, which was often inspired by Directoire and Biedermeier models. This book, which brings together more than forty years of research, includes four synthetic essays tracing the evolution of Le Corbusier’s ideas on decorative arts, as well as a comprehensive catalogue raisonné of his known furniture designs; the catalogue entries, arranged by year and project, explain lucidly (and in some detail) construction techniques and the various editions of commercially produced pieces. The book is beautifully illustrated, with excellent photographs, as well as numerous colour images of design sketches, paintings, archival documents, contemporary advertisements and furniture brochures; it also features elegant line drawings done by Rüegg and his collaborators, including plans, sections and elevations of furniture pieces; analytic diagrams explaining fabrication and assemblage; and reconstructed plans of interior spaces that were not published in Le Corbusier and Jeanneret’s eight-volume Oeuvre complète, such as the model apartment shown at the 1929 Salon d’Automne in Paris, the ‘Study for a Young Man’ displayed at the 1935 Brussels World’s Fair and Le Corbusier’s atelier at 35 rue de Sèvres in Paris. The illustrations alone justify—for collectors and academic libraries, at least—the book’s high sticker price. Moreover, the research on the early interiors, the tubular-steel chairs, the Unités d’habitation, Le Corbusier’s own residences, and the wallpapers and Salubra paint colours is impeccable. Scholars will also appreciate the appendix, which includes a useful bibliography and a list of exhibitions that displayed the atelier’s furniture. One small complaint: the index consists only of names cited in the text, and it is frustratingly incomplete at that. Nonetheless, this catalogue raisonné will remain the standard reference work on the subject for years to come. One can only hope that in the future a more modest, affordable edition of Rüegg’s wonderful essays (ideally in their full-length versions) might be made available for a general audience.

Contemporary Architecture and the Question of (Architectural) History

2009-02-03

Alan Colquhoun is a practicing architect and an emeritus professor of architecture at Princeton University. Colquhoun is an important voice in architectural historiography and the author of several books including The Oxford History of Modern Architecture, the seminal Essays in Architectural Criticism, and Modernity and the Classical Tradition. Mary McLeod is a professor of architecture at Columbia University, where she teaches architecture history and theory, and occasionally leads studios. She has also taught at Harvard University, the University of Kentucky, the University of Miami, and the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies. She received her B.A., M.Arch., and Ph.D. from Princeton University and her research and publications have focused on the history of the modern movement and on contemporary architecture theory, examining issues concerning the connections between architecture and ideology. McLeod is the editor of and contributor to Charlotte Perriand: An Art of Living and her articles have appeared in journals including Assemblage, Oppositions, Art Journal, AA Files, JSAH, Casabella, and Lotus as well as anthologies such as The Sex of Architecture; Architecture in Fashion; Architecture of the Everyday; Architecture and Feminism; The Pragmatist Imagination; and The State of Architecture. She has received numerous fellowships and awards, including a Fulbright Fellowship, NEH award, and grants from New York Council of the Arts and the Graham Foundation.

A Life of Creation: An Autobiography

Woman s Art Journal · 2005-01-01 · 3 citations

Charlotte Perriand: An Art of Living

2003-12-01 · 4 citations

One of the most innovative furniture and interior designers of the 20th century, Charlotte Perriand (1903-1999) has long been renowned for the tubular-steel chairs she created with Le Corbusier. But she had a rich, diverse career that spanned nearly 75 years and included work in Africa, South America and Asia, as well as Europe. Her independent designs are eagerly sought by collectors. Perriand's long career embraced Art Deco, machine-age modernism, the organic rusticity of the 1930s, serially produced metal and wood furniture in the '50s and '60s, and plastic and prefabricated units in the '70s. This volume contains texts by leading scholars covering many facets of her work and life, and scores of photographs and drawings.

Teoría y práctica

Transfer European Review of Labour and Research · 2003-01-01